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Re: Cantor's diagonalization argument

Subject: Re: Cantor's diagonalization argument
From: "george"
Date: 28 Oct 2006 11:18:06 -0700
Newsgroups: sci.logic
Mark-T wrote:
> Something has always bothered me about the diagonalization
> bit, a consideration I have never seen addressed.

You should get out more.

> You hypothesize the countable list of all reals, encoded
> in binary, then diagonalize out of it, by complementing the
> diagonal.  Sounds good.
>
> Except... isn't there a slight problem here, in the sense of
> 'computable', or 'effective procedure'?  How does one diagonalize
> an infinite set?  Of course, it's easy to describe, "here's what
> you do", but in fact you cannot DO it!  You cannot create this
> new 'unlisted' number, not in finite time, anyhow...

I say we need a troll-check for every re-introduction of this.


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